Arpeggiation, example “You Took Advantage Of Me”

Let’s have a look at another technique now called “arpeggiation” or “rolling” chords. Supposing our final chord in a piece is C major7, now we can play that by rolling the left hand.

We can roll both hands - and we can keep this going - rolling chords. And we can roll the other way - although that’s used less frequently.

Let’s have an example. Let’s look at “You Took Advantage Of Me” - “Satin Doll” does’t really lend itself to arpeggiation. I’m going to roll the first chord in the left hand - I’ll just roll it probably in the left hand. Then it’s E diminished. Then it’s F minor. When I play - because I’m rolling it - a seventh-tenth or a fifth-tenth - depends on how I’m feeling - F sharp diminished - another fifth-tenth.

And then let’s when we get to the end - do some dominant pedalling.

It’s out of time

OK, somebody may have noticed that I played a Ray chord in the middle there, and at the end I did a little bit of rolling down. It’s not supposed to be in time but this is the idea of rolling, at least in the left hand. We wouldn’t probably do a whole chorus of that but we would introduce it at moments when it seemed musically correct - arpeggiation.